Maurice Jones-Drew makes run at rushing title

NFL coaches are running out of things to say about Maurice Jones-Drew.

When the Jaguars' running back played the Ravens last month, Baltimore defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano said, "You put on the tape and this guy is like a rolling ball of butcher knives. He's scary."

The Ravens have the No. 2 run defense in the NFL, yet Jones-Drew ran for 105 yards in a 12-7 Jaguars win.

The Jaguars play a Tampa Bay defense Sunday that is 29th against the rush, so it wasn't surprising that Bucs coach Raheem Morris described Jones-Drew the same way Pagano did.

"He is hard to tackle. He's hard to bring down. He is a rolling ball of butcher knives. He runs angry. He runs violent," Morris said.

Jones-Drew is getting all these accolades because he is having a remarkable season in an otherwise forgettable year for the Jaguars.

He took over the NFL rushing lead last week with 1,137 yards, even though he plays on a team that has the worst passing offense in the league.

There is never a secret what the Jaguars are going to do on offense. Jones-Drew is going to run the ball. Teams put eight and sometimes nine players in the box and still can't stop him.

Jones-Drew accounts for 46.9 percent of the Jaguars offense this year (1,434 of 3,056 yards). Matt Forte, out with a knee injury, is a distant second with 38 percent of the Chicago offense.

Jones-Drew (1,137 yards) is in what is essentially a two-man race for the rushing title with a three-yard lead over LeSean McCoy of Philadelphia. Forte (997) is third, followed by Atlanta's Michael Turner (992).

Jones-Drew is downplaying his pursuit of his first rushing title. He said he would take pride in the title only if the Jaguars win their final four games.

"Hopefully, I can get it and we can win the next four," he said. "That'd be awesome. That'd be ideal. If it comes along with the wins, I'd be happy. I'd love to win the thing - along with the four wins. If we don't win the game, I could care less."

Jones-Drew added, "I know you probably think I'm bull-jiving you, but I could care less about the rushing title. I want to win. People remember winners. I mean, tell me who was the rushing leader in '93. Does anybody know? It could have been Emmitt (Smith), but I don't know. You don't know but you know who won the Super Bowl in '93, right? Exactly, so that's what people remember. They remember winners and that's what you want your legacy to be, is you're a winner. That's something we have to figure out how to do here, and that's kind of on our shoulders."

Jones-Drew hasn't done a lot of winning with the Jaguars. The team has won just one playoff game in 2007 in his six years in the NFL and hasn't made the playoffs since he became the full-time back in 2009 after Fred Taylor was released.

Related: Bucs at Jaguars: Breaking down the game

In high school, he played at De La Salle in Concord, Calif., and never lost a game. He was part of a school winning streak that reached 138 games.

At UCLA, the Bruins were 6-7 and 6-6 his first two years before going 10-2 in his final season in 2005. The Bruins were overshadowed at the time by USC and were routed 66-19 in 2005, although the Trojans later had to forfeit victories over UCLA because of rules infractions.

Just as UCLA improved each year, Jones-Drew is hopeful the Jaguars will do the same.

"You learn a lot from losing," he said. "We say we have a lot of high-character guys on this team. Well, we're going to see because losing makes that character come out, who you really are. Everybody can be all happy-go-lucky when you're winning, so we'll see what kind of workers we have. As I've seen, guys are busting their butts to do everything they can to get ready to play.

"There are no frontrunners on this team. No one is going to point fingers. No one is going to shut it down or try not to play. We're going to keep playing until we figure this thing out and we've got four more games to do it."

SUPER BOWL GOALS

Jones-Drew is in his sixth season. He'll be 27 in March and the shelf life of most running backs doesn't go much past 30.

Jones-Drew, though, still believes he's going to be in a Super Bowl before his career is done.

"I know it's going to happen,'' he said. "I can't think about it because I've got to worry about the guys I'm going against week after week. Every off-season, that's how we work. We work to get to the Super Bowl. You're just not going to wake up one morning and be Super Bowl champs. You've got to go through a lot of stuff. Right now we're going through this process where we're on the back end of it, so hopefully we can turn it around and get going next year.''

For this year, the rushing title is the carrot and Jones-Drew's teammates want to get it for him.

"It's definitely a goal for us," said guard Uche Nwaneri. "For the (offensive) line, that's kind of a crowning achievement for us to get a rushing title."

Added left tackle Eugene Monroe said, "Since the season hasn't gone our way, we can look at that very positively because we put the work in. It'd be a great thing."

For running backs coach Earnest Byner, it would be the second time in three years he has coached the NFL's rushing leader. He was Chris Johnson's coach in 2009 with Tennessee when Johnson rushed for 2006 yards.

"He's a beautiful dude," Byner said of Jones-Drew. "Very, very exciting to be able to coach him. He's very smart and also very hungry. He wants the absolute best for the team."

He added, "We are all competitors. When you play against one of the best in the league, you want to outshine whoever that is. He's competing against all of the other backs. Not just the backs, though. He's competing against all of the other players because Mojo is in a strata where he's what they call playmakers on the team. So all of the best players in the league, he's competing against. And you want to be the best."

KEEPING RELEVANT

Jones-Drew, who leads the NFL with 250 carries, also has become something of a dinosaur in a passing league.

"Each week you keep trying to make your position relevant,'' he said. "Really, at the end of the day, that's all you can do. The league is starting to turn into a 7-on-7 passing things, but as long as you can make your position relevant, I guess they keep you around."

The Bucs know that stopping Jones-Drew and forcing rookie quarterback Blaine Gabbert to throw is their top priority today.

"We all know what Maurice can do. We've seen him play," said veteran cornerback Ronde Barber. "Everybody is a fan of him. Love the way he plays the game. If we expect to come out of Jacksonville with a win, and we need one sorely, we've got to stop the run. That's the bottom line.

"Let them put it on their young quarterback and we feel like our chances are a lot better than if they just turn around and hand it to 32 all day."

Vito Stellino: (904) 359-4279

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